The Big Sandy River watershed is about 2300 square miles and includes portions of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia. Virginia’s portion is approximately 575 square miles or 25 percent of the entire watershed basin. The watershed encompasses less than 5 percent of the land area in Virginia.
A free-flowing river, the headwaters of the Big Sandy River are in McDowell County, West Virginia and in Virginia’s Wise, Dickenson, Buchanan, and Tazewell Counties. The river empties into the Ohio River.
The Big Sandy River watershed is part of the largest deciduous forest in the world and is characterized by steep mountain slopes, deep ravines, and narrow valleys, which make businesses and communities within the watershed basin prone to erosion and flooding.
Land use in the Big Sandy River watershed is predominantly forestry, but a significant amount of the region has been mined for coal or is currently being mined.
Approximately 60,000 people live in the Virginia portion of the Big Sandy watershed in Buchanan, Dickenson, Wise and Tazewell counties. The people of the Big Sandy River Basin share a common geographic and economic base (coal and timber are abundant). The watershed also possesses significant potential for increased tourism through water-borne recreation and eco-tourism, as well as through the promotion of its coalfield heritage, music, and Appalachian culture. However, the region lacks the basic infrastructure such as sewage disposal, solid waste disposal, water supplies, highways, and building sites, to effectively market its abundant natural, historical, and cultural resources in a sustainable manner.
The Big Sandy River has been identified as the seventh most endangered river in the United States. On October 11, 2000, a mineshaft beneath a “coal slurry” impoundment owned by Martin County Coal Company collapsed and released millions of gallons of molasses-like slurry into the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River. The slurry suffocated aquatic life for miles downriver, and the EPA called this event “one of the worst environmental disasters to occur in the Southeastern United States.”
Contact information:
DCR Tennesssee-Big Sandy Watersheds Office
252 W. Main Street, Suite 3
Abingdon, VA 24210
Phone: (276) 676-5528
Fax: (276) 676-5527
Learn from others in your community.
Additional resources:
www.americanrivers.org/mostendangered/2001bigsandyreport.htm
http://kywater.org/watch/bsr.htm
www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/00/app-rvr00/OCTOBE1.PDF
